The Romantic Movement in England was a part of the general European
reaction against the spirit of the eighteenth century. This began
somewhat earlier in England than in Germany, and very much earlier than
in France, where literacy conservatism went strangely hand in hand with
political radicalism. In England the reaction was at first gradual,
timid, and unconscious. It did not reach importance until the seventh
decade of the century, and culminated only in the early years of the
nineteenth century. The medieval revival was only an incident--though a
leading incident--of this movement; but it is the side of it with which
the present work will mainly deal. Thus I shall have a great deal to say
about Scott; very little about Byron, intensely romantic as he was in
many meanings of the word. This will not preclude me from glancing
occasionally at other elements besides medievalism which enter into the
concept of the term "romantic."

Reverting then to our tentative definition--Heine's definition--of
romanticism, as the reproduction in modern art and literature of the life
of the Middle Ages, it should be explained that the expression, "Middle
Ages," is to be taken here in a liberal sense. Contributions to romantic
literature such as Macpherson's "Ossian," Collins' "Ode on the
Superstitions of the Scottish Highlands," and Gray's translations form
the Welsh and the Norse, relate to periods which antedate that era of
Christian chivalry and feudalism, extending roughly from the eleventh
century to the fifteenth, to which the term, "Middle Ages," more strictly
applies. The same thing is true of the ground-work, at least, of ancient
hero-epics like "Beowulf" and the "Nibelungen Lied," of the Icelandic
"Sagas," and of similar products of old heathen Europe which have come
down in the shape of mythologies, popular superstitions, usages, rites,
songs, and traditions. These began to fall under the notice of scholars